Tarot 101: Reversed Cards…

What are reversed cards in Tarot? It’s when the cards are upside down in a reading. Seems pretty easy right. You just interpret the cards as the opposite of the regular meanings right?

Let me stop you right there.

Reversed cards can present as many problems as Court cards. Unlike Court cards, reversed cards are completely optional and are added to a deck during shuffling (when you just flip some cards 180 when shuffling). So don’t feel too worried that the cards will come up reversed, and don’t feel pressured to add them to your readings before you’re ready. As much as it works in your favor to add those deeper meanings into a reading, it doesn’t work if something pops up and you can’t interpret it.

Reversed cards don’t mean that the meanings are completely reversed. From what I’ve read, a reversed card can be interpreted just as you would interpret an upright card in a normal reading. So break out your thinking caps and take a long look at the reversed card.

Take a look at the card like you would any other card. Read the scene, the people, the items present, the colors. Read the way the scene is playing out.

Let’s take our Ace of Cups example. Right side up, we can interpret the card as being full of emotion, or having abundance and fertility. However reversed, we see the cup spilling out, the waters running from the cup, so we can interpret the card as losing something or lack of something, like emotion (which is what cups represents), or fertility (which is present on the card face). So depending on the question and the context of the card in relation to the other cards in the draw, you can pick up a little clue here and there as to what a reversed card can mean.

While memorization is important, it’s also important to use your context clues for the question